The present invention relates to a hair braider and its auxiliary device and, more particularly, to an improved hair braider which is portable and weaves three bunches of hair into one braid.
Usually, hair is manually braided by a person other than the one who wants to obtain the hair style of dreadlocks. This braiding work takes extremely long time and costs too much. Also, the quality of such manually-braided hair style depends on the worker""s skill totally, so that it may not be uniform.
As shown in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,427,017 to Eronimi, an automatic hair braiding device has been developed to save hair braiding time. In the Eronimi""s device, a rudder device moves along a figure xe2x80x988xe2x80x99-shaped track to accomplish the figure eight track motion, which is essential for hair braiding operation. A rudder section has a slot therein, which receives two paddle elements circulating in opposite directions and enables a rudder device moves from a half of the figure xe2x80x988xe2x80x99 -shaped track to the other at the intersection point or area of the track.
In the Eronimi invention, to move from one track to the other track, the rudder section should smoothly receive another paddle element into its slot at the entry position in the crossover area and should be receiving two paddle elements in a slot while it passes through the crossover area, and release one of the two paddle elements at the exit in the crossover area.
However, the above mentioned invention does not smoothly operate at the crossover area because of the mechanical shock caused by the engagement and disengagement between the paddle element and the slot of rudder section. Even though the slot is wider to weaken the mechanical shock, it would not smooth the track changing operation because of wider clearance between the slot and the paddle element.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a hair braider conducting a smooth figure eight track motion to braid hair.
To achieve the above object, the invention comprises a housing containing an electric motor therein and a motor switch installed on the sidewall, a gear box mounted on the upper face of the housing and having a guide plate with an opening formed in a substantially figure eight shape by two intersecting circular openings, a pair of cams mounted on the upper ends of shafts in the center of each circular opening, each defining an annular cam track of a predetermined width with the inner sidewall of the circular opening, a pair of rotors, which is mounted on each top of the shafts, being rotated in opposite directions by the motor, a plurality of carriers disposed slidably in the cam track and conducting a xe2x80x988xe2x80x99 track motion along the cam track according to the rotation of the rotors, and a plurality of hair grabbing members combinable with the carriers, each traveling with the carrier with a bunch of hair accommodated therein.
As the hair grabbing members mounting on the carriers travel along the cam track by the rotors rotating in opposite directions, a plurality of bunches of hair accommodated in the hair grabbing members are braided into one strand.
As this invention enables hair to be braided uniformly by conducting xe2x80x988xe2x80x99 track motion smoothly, time and cost for the hair braiding work can be reduced remarkably. Even a non-skilled operator can obtain a uniformly-braided hair. Furthermore, this invention is portable, anyone can easily braid his or her hair by himself or herself.